[PB] Vertical stripes on Powerbook G4

[Ruqayya Abdus-Salaam]

Please help. I bought a used Titanium Powerbook G4 15" 667 MHz with 1GB of ram and an 80G hard drive running Tiger. It came loaded with software from ebay with a 30day guarantee. I was ecstatic for the price. Worked great for the first month I had it. One night I was working on it and the screen suddenly zapped out to vertical stripes. I restarted it and it came back - but not for long. It gets hot - sometimes enough to "shock" my wrist but I don't know if this has anything to do with it. I can get it to come on for a few minutes at a time but the least jarring movement will zap it out again. Sometimes it works for a couple of hours then "zap". It may get small fuzzy squares then it goes to vertical stripes.But when it does come back with a clear screen the data is intact and the image is clear.
 
I thought it was a problem with the connection between the screen and the computer because I had a similar problem with my old G3 Wallstreet - which still works great - and I just connected it to an external monitor with no problems. But when I connected the G4 to an external monitor I got the same vertical striped image. ??? I've seen on some lists that there is a loose plug inside that can cause this problem but would it still affect an external monitor? 
 
I took it to the local Mac service station in Dakar. (I'm a teacher at a U.S. school in Senegal in West Africa) I'm really not too confident in what the guy told me. He said that it was a problem with the System software and wants to dump my hard drive and do a clean install of the system. He said that there were so many corrupted files (the guy I bought it from gave me a lot of free stuff) that it was easier just to re-install. Now I'm not an expert - but I know that a software problem wouldn't cause a machine to zap out if my 7-yr old bumps the table. I ask myself why he didn't just use Techtools or Norton or something? Plus - I really don't want to hand over my software cds and dvds. 
 
Please advise. They're the only authorized Mac service station in Senegal.     


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